While I am ignorant of the proceedures and politics of the UK school situation, I can report what has happened in a couple of grade and high schools here in Texas.

Now, I am no Linux expert...I'm just a normal everyday user, but I am passionate about the proliferation of Linux and open source as a matter of course. I have been successful in getting two schools to migrate, some only in part to Linux and one of them will be migrating to openoffice from Office XP.

Here is the obstacle I faced mostly. People were simply not aware of their options. As suprised as I was to find that out, I was even more suprised to find that most people in administration and purchasing thought I was trying to sell them something. It took quite the effort to make them understand that my efforts were 60 percent altruistic and 40 percent of wanting my tax dollars to go toward actual education and not lining the pockets of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer...especially when their product is over rated and underachieving when it comes to security. This thing can be done with a bit of focus and tenacity...PCLinuxOS has been the key to my success in Linux Desktop presentations. The ohhh's and ahhh's are gratifying and even more so when the program is committed to the hard drive...yes, even though this magazine reported that it was impossible to do so...quite the opposite. So I encourage parents of students and even employees of the schools to push Linux and opensource...My results have been more than gratifying.

helios

From the great state of Texas...we all carry guns and are VERY polite to one another.